The beautifully reproduced photos in Kristin Bedford's book capture the flavour of the lowrider scene in LA between 2014 and 2019. Teen and young adult Mexican Americans love to drive around their communities in these heavily customised cars, mostly several years old but in the photos they look almost new because of the time their owners devote to the flamboyant spray jobs and sparkling chrome.
Bedford wanted to show the lowrider community as much as the cars so there are only a few photos showing a complete vehicle but plenty of close-ups revealing colourful interiors and decorative paint on the outside. The portraits are a mix of the owners sitting in their cars or elsewhere, photo forty taken in 2018, has a man (the groom?) at a wedding with dollars tucked into his braces, photo seventy is from a funeral in 2017 with four men and a teen, dressed in casual black and looking sternly at the camera. The ladies in these photos are strong on make-up and dressed for their next cruise night.
It's worth commenting on the book's excellent production. It's twelve inches square with the title and author debossed on the cover. The seventy-five photos are printed with a 250 screen on gorgeous matt art paper. Oddly there are no page numbers, only the photos are numbered which makes the captions, on four pages at the back of the book, difficult to tie in with their photo.
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